Nippon Temporarily Shut Down Because of Biomass Fuel Problems at Power Plant

- by Paul Got­tlieb, Feb­ru­ary 27, 2014. Source: Penin­su­la Dai­ly News

PORT ANGELES — Fuel-sys­tem prob­lems with Nip­pon Paper Indus­tries USA’s new­ly expand­ed bio­mass cogen­er­a­tion plant have caused a two-week shut­down of the mill, accord­ing to a union official.

Dar­rel Reetz, vice pres­i­dent of the Asso­ci­a­tion of West­ern Pulp & Paper Work­ers Local 155, said Thurs­day he is con­fi­dent the plant will be up and run­ning again by about March 9.

“We are hav­ing some issues that need to be fixed on the fuel sys­tem,” Reetz said.
“That’s why we are not pro­duc­ing elec­tric­i­ty, because we are try­ing to get the fuel sys­tem sta­bi­lized.”

Hog fuel is the woody detri­tus used in bio­mass-fired plants.

The mate­r­i­al, con­veyed by bins, was not ade­quate­ly feed­ing the new boil­er, Reetz said.

Stain­less steel screws have to be removed and new ones set.

“It’s a major recon­fig­ure,” Reetz said.

The boiler’s ash pro­cess­ing sys­tem also was plugged up, he added.

The $85 mil­lion cogen­er­a­tion plant expan­sion, ded­i­cat­ed in Novem­ber, was built to pro­duce 20 megawatts to cre­ate steam for the mill and elec­tric­i­ty for sale by burn­ing bio­mass, or woody debris.

Since then, it has pro­duced no more than 10 megawatts, Reetz said.

“It’s been up and down,” he said. “It was run­ning pret­ty good at around 10 megawatts. Of course, you want to go high­er.

“They should solve the prob­lems,” he said. “They are try­ing their best.”

Res­i­dent mill man­ag­er Harold Nor­lund would not com­ment Thurs­day about the tem­po­rary clo­sure.

Phil Lusk, deputy direc­tor of pow­er and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tems for the city of Port Ange­les, said Thurs­day he gen­er­al­ly knows what the prob­lems are and believes they are fix­able.

He deferred fur­ther ques­tions about repair issues fac­ing the cogen­er­a­tion plant to com­pa­ny offi­cials.

“When it starts up, every pow­er plant has its own sets of issues,” Lusk said.

“It sounds like it didn’t work accord­ing to plan, so you change the plan.”

A skele­ton crew is work­ing Nippon’s night shift, while about 30 main­te­nance and elec­tri­cal employ­ees are work­ing the day shift, Reetz said.

Some day work­ers also are per­form­ing main­te­nance on the dry­er sec­tion of the mill’s No. 3 paper machine, Reetz said.

Nippon’s human resources depart­ment has been work­ing to des­ig­nate dif­fer­ent main­te­nance jobs to out-of-work employ­ees, he said.

Oth­er employ­ees among the mill’s 119-per­son work­force are seek­ing tem­po­rary employ­ment through Work­Source, the state’s offi­cial site for online employ­ment ser­vices.

Shut­down prepa­ra­tions began Feb. 18, when employ­ees were noti­fied in a human resources depart­ment memo that annu­al main­te­nance sched­uled for April was being moved to Feb­ru­ary “to solve these prob­lems,” Reetz said.

Shut­down prepa­ra­tions were com­plet­ed by Sun­day.

The mill on Ediz Hook west of Port Ange­les was the first of two mills on the North Olympic Penin­su­la to expand elec­tric gen­er­a­tion capa­bil­i­ties through bio­mass burn­ing.

The Port Townsend Paper Corp. has delayed its $55 mil­lion cogen­er­a­tion plant until this year or 2015. It is expect­ed to gen­er­ate 24 megawatts.